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In a game with 35+ balanced characters it is impossible to learn every matchup as well as most players would like, which leads to people getting "randomned out." It can be speculated that when there are only 8 viable characters the level of play is higher because those 8 matchups are known more intimately.

In a game with 35+ balanced characters it is impossible to learn every matchup as well as most players would like, which leads to people getting "randomned out." It can be speculated that when there are only 8 viable characters the level of play is higher because those 8 matchups are known more intimately.

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Yeah I can see what you mean, I remember SSF4 having that certain random factor, I guess a balanced game with 30+ characters would just make the game boring because you have to focus more on learning to fight against different characters than adjusting to the actual fighting engine itself.

In a game with 35+ balanced characters it is impossible to learn every matchup as well as most players would like, which leads to people getting "randomned out." It can be speculated that when there are only 8 viable characters the level of play is higher because those 8 matchups are known more intimately.

Great point bro.

As for me, most of the people I play with love to turtle, projectile spam and assist like a mad man. When playing an unbalanced game this is easier to do once you know the "top tier" characters. I'm more of hand-to-hand fighter with Akuma and Ryu for example and I save my specials for punishing my opponent's mistakes.

I guess a balanced game with 30+ characters would just make the game boring because you have to focus more on learning to fight against different characters than adjusting to the actual fighting engine itself.

Yes!!

I used to really wish games were more balanced, but in the last few years I've come to realize there are certain character archetypes I wouldn't really want in top tier positions. Nothing wrong with wanting balance, but its not really the most important thing to me anymore.

Because sometimes being unbalanced its fun. People like broken mechanics, it keeps the thing more hype and crazy. Its why imo SSFIV wasn't that fun compared to SFIV's broken shit or the older games. As long as the brokenness is varied its awesome, otherwise its becomes formulatic and boring.

What I was trying to say is that it's the same things that help make MvC2 broken that prolonged it's life. That is, the ease of which the engine (which, according to the Backbone team that ported it to PSN/XBLA, was held together with "string and glue") was "broken" and the freedom that brought. In the case of MvC2 then, it was the fact that people kept "breaking" it that kept it alive for so long. In fact, I believe that someone else here (either fanatiq or shoultz) has stated that had MvC2 been patched early on, it's competitive life would have been cut by 8 years.

People tend to like games where most of the characters are really strong even regardless of their tier position. eg. ST maintains the illusion of balance by giving everyone access to high damage. All the characters are capable are killing with 2 big combos. So even if you're down 80% life, you know there's always chance for a comeback if you guess right once or your opponent makes a mistake.

Same here. Feels great shutting someone down because you know what to expect. (:

I prefer to take my opponent down with pure fighting and combos. I've had matches where I end up with quite a few special bars left. Some might say to always use them when you can get them in, but I just love the feeling of taking people down with playing smart, counter-attacking and taking advantage of opponent mistakes.

In a game with 35+ balanced characters it is impossible to learn every matchup as well as most players would like, which leads to people getting "randomned out." It can be speculated that when there are only 8 viable characters the level of play is higher because those 8 matchups are known more intimately.

I think this is one of the most insightful anti-balance posts I've ever seen on here. It's similar to the execution argument, in that it introduces arbitrary time-sync barriers. Even if all 35+ characters are balanced, then being good with the oddball character (Gen, Hakan, etc) becomes the new overpowered thing. Not because they're actually overpowered, but because most people really have no idea what to do against a good one. Thus, knowing the obscure match-ups becomes an artificial barrier to becoming a top player.

I honestly think the roster of fighting games has become too large. I think that 12~20 is the sweet spot. Anything more than that, and you pretty much guarantee that some characters will be oddballs that almost nobody uses. I realize that adding more characters is part of what hooks people on buying sequels, and ditching characters would piss some people off. It's a tricky problem. If given the choice of ditching some characters vs making them suck, I'm not sure what the best way to go would be.

The thing is a lot of people even some top players don?t care about getting better they just want to win, don?t care if they are good with a charter as long as the character can win thats why people like it unbalanced/limited matchups.

Using World of Warcraft as an example the pvp in the game was very unbalanced the first 2 versions of the game mainly because the 2 lead dev didn?t care about balance. There was a time near the end of the 1st expansion where in the 3v3 ladder the top 20% of teams 75% of them the team was druid, warrior, rouge (3 of the 9 classes). Then at the last big tourney 90% of the top teams was druid, warrior, rouge and 100% of the teams in general had rouge on their teams.

Fast-forward to the 2rd expansion and there is a new lead dev on the game who cares about balance there is a big tourney in Europe and people are going apeshit about the results because for the first time every class in the game was represented top 8. Player complained about parlour tricks and being ?randomed out? yet it was the 1st expansion that was random most matches featured someone dieing in under 3 second and losing control of their character for 80% of the match.

It took like 2/3 months before top players realized they were the best at using the best characters not best at the game and the whining stopped. Its funny cus ive heard Justin Wong use that phrase about himself in 3s. Saying that hes not amazing at 3s just good at using the best charter while in MvC2 he feels hes the best player at the game regardless of tiers.

Basically I just want a game with no low tier (tru low tier as in this char is completely tourney un-viable) where the worst matchups are 6.5/3.5 and there is a good collection of play styles. Games like 3s n CvS2 almost made it to that lv.

Some people will say that unbalanced fighting games are just "more fun" or "more hype". Those people are wrong. It's true that MVC2 was an unbalanced game that remained popular for 10 years, but Tekken 4 was an unbalanced game that remained popular for two minutes. CVS2 was a severely unbalanced game that became popular only after the advent of roll-cancelling, which increased the balance in that game by leaps and bounds. In general, games with more variety of play styles are more fun to play and games that have a large community playing them are more hype. Look at MVC2. Even though it had four playable characters out of 56, those four characters had a zoner, a rusher, a big bruiser and a hit & run pixie character. By contrast, Tekken 4 only has "JF laser scraper character" and old-school CVS2 had only "poking character".

The real reason people like fighting games to be unbalanced is revealed in what T37 Rampage said. A really balanced fighting game is hard to win at. Like Sun Tzu, hardcore fighting game players want to "win without fighting". With a balanced game you need to learn all the match-ups, figure out how to play against all the characters, and earn victory in every game. In MVC3 if I play Magneto/Wesker/Sentinel and you play Hsien Ko/Viewtiful Joe/Arthur I've pretty much won before the fight even began. Most hardcore players want to take the path of least resistance, and like games where that path is clear and well-defined. Even among the top tier characters, most people prefer to play the easier characters to use. Sim and Chun can counter any air attack but you have to know which anti-air to use. They are less popular than Shotos, who counter everything with a DP. Almost every character in SSF4 has safe jump-in options, but they are less popular than dive-kick characters who don't need to time their safe jumps exactly. Just look around at the forums here. Everyone is dedicated to finding strategies that make the game unbalanced in their favor. Of course they're going to love a game that does half the work for them.

"Being degrading or insulting is not the same as being hype." - Mike Z

Some people will say that unbalanced fighting games are just "more fun" or "more hype". Those people are wrong. It's true that MVC2 was an unbalanced game that remained popular for 10 years, but Tekken 4 was an unbalanced game that remained popular for two minutes. CVS2 was a severely unbalanced game that became popular only after the advent of roll-cancelling, which increased the balance in that game by leaps and bounds. In general, games with more variety of play styles are more fun to play and games that have a large community playing them are more hype. Look at MVC2. Even though it had four playable characters out of 56, those four characters had a zoner, a rusher, a big bruiser and a hit & run pixie character. By contrast, Tekken 4 only has "JF laser scraper character" and old-school CVS2 had only "poking character".

The real reason people like fighting games to be unbalanced is revealed in what T37 Rampage said. A really balanced fighting game is hard to win at. Like Sun Tzu, hardcore fighting game players want to "win without fighting". With a balanced game you need to learn all the match-ups, figure out how to play against all the characters, and earn victory in every game. In MVC3 if I play Magneto/Wesker/Sentinel and you play Hsien Ko/Viewtiful Joe/Arthur I've pretty much won before the fight even began. Most hardcore players want to take the path of least resistance, and like games where that path is clear and well-defined. Even among the top tier characters, most people prefer to play the easier characters to use. Sim and Chun can counter any air attack but you have to know which anti-air to use. They are less popular than Shotos, who counter everything with a DP. Almost every character in SSF4 has safe jump-in options, but they are less popular than dive-kick characters who don't need to time their safe jumps exactly. Just look around at the forums here. Everyone is dedicated to finding strategies that make the game unbalanced in their favor. Of course they're going to love a game that does half the work for them.

Agreed 100%. I prefer balanced games by a mile.

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Harder to win in a balanced fighting game? You know not everyone plays top tiers, even in unbalanced games. Really I'd say its just harder to win in a game with more characters assuming they aren't throwaway garbage.

Harder to win in a balanced fighting game? You know not everyone plays top tiers, even in unbalanced games. Really I'd say its just harder to win in a game with more characters assuming they aren't throwaway garbage.

It sounds like you disagree with me in your first sentence, but your second sentence is a rephrasing of my basic idea. I mean, if it's "harder to win in a game with more characters assuming they aren't throwaway garbage" then winning in a game where everyone is actually good should be even tougher than that.

"Being degrading or insulting is not the same as being hype." - Mike Z

I agree with that matchup thing. Also, I don't think it's really about balance. Let's say today AE is still unbalanced except that defensive zoning characters like Dhalsim & Guile are top tiers. Is it going to make the game better? It's really about what kind of playstyle is favored by the community & more capable of generating exciting matches. The bottom line is most people don't like seeing half of the match full of fireball dodging & keepaway game. If you make every single character in the game tournament viable, you greatly increase the chance of that happening. So, in the case of AE, they tilted things in the rushdown chars favor to ensure there will be fists flying & combos that ensue.

I dunno about the matchup thing. That seems like the kinda thing that would keep a game like SUPER TURBO alive forever. The more to learn the more to do essentially. You people are now essentially suggesting that learning the game is somehow a bad idea. It is a PROHIBITIVE idea, but that's outside the vein of FG theory. Also I think this is a misuse of the word balance. I don't think people kept playing MvC2 because it was unbalanced, but because the balance that formed was fun to play. I can't imagine there's anyone that wouldn't like to see every possible character being viable so you could use whoever you wanted and still have a chance of coming up. The real problem lies in the impossibility of transposing that over any existing game that's not more or less War2. and even then orcs were better. WTH.

People spent 10 years with a crappy game as the (at the time) last game in the series, and they have developed a form of Stockholm syndrome*. If there was no Snes version of Turtles Tournament Fighters, people would have latched onto the genesis version the same way, and talked shit about the snes version if it were released in the last 3 years, saying it sucks compared to the genesis version.

*Spend enough time with anything, and you start to like it, even prefer it. The tournament mentality of latching onto the latest game (even if it's basically MUGEN), contributed to this.

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Yeah I can see what you mean, I remember SSF4 having that certain random factor, I guess a balanced game with 30+ characters would just make the game boring because you have to focus more on learning to fight against different characters than adjusting to the actual fighting engine itself.

Not really, a balanced game doesn't mean a boring game nor does an unbalanced game mean a fun game. But people's idea of balance is frequently ridiculous, just like the idea that MvC2 has only 4 characters when you can see a Megaman player getting top 8 at EVO. MvC2 isn't a balanced game but the extent of its balance issues is exaggerated. Balance only becomes an issue when you have games like SvC and the ridiculous things that Geese and Zero can do.

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This guy explains most of this fairly well, aside from the fact that he uses League Of Legends as an example for a perfectly imbalanced game with an evolving meta when it never changes unless Riot decides to nerf the heroes and buff other ones.

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This is called a "boast/excuse option select" and it's without a doubt the most useful technique that anyone has ever taught me." -Deadfrog

Balance is just one of many factors that determine fun, and it often comes at the price of true variety in the character designs. Some people just get too caught up in having 50 "balanced" skins to choose from even if the characters underneath are practically copy and pasted.

Balance is just one of many factors that determine fun, and it often comes at the price of true variety in the character designs. Some people just get too caught up in having 50 "balanced" skins to choose from even if the characters underneath are practically copy and pasted.

People always cite this as an argument against balance, but I think it's a strawman argument - has this oft-cited "balanced but all the characters are the same" game ever actually been made in the post-karate-champ era? Even games like the early entries in the Mortal Kombat series where everybody kinda looked the same and had a projectile, a rushing attack, blahblah weren't examples of this.

It sounds to me like people are afraid of something that's never happened, probably never will happen, and can be prevented by an ounce of good design.

I think people do have a point about the number of potential matchups getting stupid in a game with a lot of balanced characters, but I consider that just an argument against having fighting games with 25+ characters in them, moreso than an argument against balanced games.

It sounds to me like people are afraid of something that's never happened, probably never will happen, and can be prevented by an ounce of good design.

Depending on your priorities, it has happened. You mentioned Mortal Kombat giving most characters every tool needed to succeed which detracts from fun. Beyond that, they're still sharing animations between characters and giving them too similar of frame data. If that's the price of balance, I'd rather have them make a second sweep animation instead of a character or even risk imbalance to have it all.

I feel there is sooooooooo much more to do in a broken unbalanced game than a balanced one, Like sf4 is pretty limited compared to maybe mvc,or even the alpha games but ae2012 is really balanced while the others are not,its just way more fun to watch an play imo

Depending on your priorities, it has happened. You mentioned Mortal Kombat giving most characters every tool needed to succeed which detracts from fun.

But MK isn't even BALANCED, so how can it be an example of a game where everyone is the same because of balance? -_-

Beyond that, they're still sharing animations between characters and giving them too similar of frame data. If that's the price of balance

But you don't know if it is or not. It could just be, for example, that it's hard to have nearly 40 characters in a game and have the frame data on a lot of things be radically different without being stupid. (Say what you want, there are plenty of ways to make something unbalanced AND bad). I mean seriously - how slow or fast can you actually make a sweep before it becomes dumb?

I'd rather have them make a second sweep animation instead of a character or even risk imbalance to have it all.

Because re-using animation is TOTALLY caused by balance and not by the animation budget...

I think we just have different ideas of what a new character entails.

Maybe, but it me it just sounds like you're trying to make balance a scapegoat for things that have clear other causes.

It could just be, for example, that it's hard to have nearly 40 characters in a game and have the frame data on a lot of things be radically different without being stupid.

I totally agree. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike tons of characters or the idea of perfect balance between them, it's just that, for me, having as many unique and powerful characters as possible is the priority before total character count or balance.

Maybe people should start there and instead of saying "only one third of mvc2 characters can compete while ninety percent can in sf4", they could say "MvC2 has 5-6 unique characters that push the limits of human execution,speed, and creativity, while SF4 has zero".

I totally agree. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike tons of characters or the idea of perfect balance between them, it's just that, for me, having as many unique and powerful characters as possible is the priority before total character count or balance.

Can't argue with that!

Maybe people should start there and instead of saying "only one third of mvc2 characters can compete while ninety percent can in sf4", they could say "MvC2 has 5-6 unique characters that push the limits of human execution,speed, and creativity, while SF4 has zero".

The trouble with this measure is that it leaves out stuff like how the underlying engine works. Because I don't think you'll find a lot of people arguing that Vanilla SF4 was particularly balanced, but it still didn't really have any characters that met your criteria.